Comparisons
Shopify Plus or Shopify Advanced
What I would pick: Advanced, unless you tick one of these four: more than three B2B price lists actually in use, a negotiated price per account, different catalogs per branch, or Shopify Functions written for your store. If you tick none, the budget for the plan upgrade goes further spent on order flow.
The differences
| What we compare | Shopify Plus | Shopify Advanced |
|---|---|---|
| Active B2B catalogs | Unlimited | 3 in total, counting all B2B markets |
| Catalog assignment | Directly to a company or a specific location | Through B2B markets; companies inherit it |
| Custom Functions | Yes: can install custom apps containing Functions | No: only Functions shipping inside a public app |
| Checkout | Extensions and Functions written for your store | Editor and public apps |
| Quantity rules and volume pricing | Yes | Yes, the same as on Plus |
| Companies and locations | No company limit; 10,000 locations per company | Same as Plus |
The row that decides it, and it is not the one people look at
Of the whole table, the one that settles 80% of cases is the first: three active catalogs on Advanced, unlimited on Plus. And the way to use it is not technical, it is arithmetic.
Take last year’s orders and count how many different price lists were actually used. Not the ones in the sales PDF. I have seen lists of eight tiers that, once the orders were checked, were two and one exception. If the count is three or fewer, Advanced is enough and the conversation ends.
The second row is the one that surprises people
Assignment. Without Plus, a catalog is not plugged into a company: it is plugged into a B2B market and the companies in that market inherit it. The consequence is that your price segmentation has to match your geographic segmentation.
The example that comes up in almost every meeting: if your three tiers are “wholesale Spain”, “wholesale Portugal” and “distributor”, they are spent and there is no room for key accounts. Half an hour at a whiteboard before choosing a plan saves the redesign afterwards.
What is not a reason to move to Plus
- “We want to customise the checkout.” If what you want is colours, a logo, a font or a notice, that is the editor and public apps, on Advanced.
- “We are going to grow a lot.” Plus can be bought the day it is needed. The wall appears in the number of price lists long before the number of orders.
- “We need volume discounts.” They are on Advanced, inside the catalog.
What is
Your own Functions. Only stores on Plus can install custom apps that contain them. And that is the difference that breaks the most quotes mid-project: with a public app you adapt to its data model, with your own Function you set the model.
If your cart rule looks at the whole order — a minimum order value, not mixing tiers, a product that requires another — there is no way to do it without Plus.